Kaito hummed a bouncy tune as he walked home from school. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, all was right in the world.

The most recent heist and subsequent meeting with Tantei-kun had been… well, unexpected. He had been surprised and honestly kinda hurt to learn that the detective still considered him a rival rather than a friend. Personally, he thought that since the excuses for letting him escape had become so blatantly transparent, their friendship really should have been obvious by now. Not to mention, on the occasions when they were able to work together, the two had demonstrated mutual trust and respect far beyond what most friends had.

Kaito, for his part, had given up denying his feelings ages ago. The first time he'd met the little detective, he'd been amused and mildly intrigued to find a child on the roof where he'd expected a police task force. Their second encounter, he'd been surprised and impressed at the boy's intelligence. After the third time, he'd become convinced that the kid had some secrets, and he was burning with curiosity about them. Fortunately he didn't have to wait long, as some well-placed bugs during their next meeting revealed his true identity. It was a huge relief to discover that 'Conan' was actually Kudou Shinichi. At the time, he'd chalked it up to relief at knowing he wasn't being challenged by an actual six year old.

At that point, he'd already developed a healthy dose of respect and fondness for the little detective. But when he caught himself arranging the Blue Wonder heist with no objective at all except to impress and interact with the guy, and subsequently observed how his heart would soar whenever he knew Conan would be coming to a heist, he'd realized his feelings had developed into a crush. Kaito had never seen the point in denying one's own feelings — there really was nothing to be gained from deluding oneself. So he'd acknowledged his crush and hoped it was one of those minor celebrity crushes that would soon fade on its own.

If only.

Instead, Kaito continued to plan increasingly elaborate and awe-inducing tricks specifically to show off for him. He purposely lingered afterwards to chat with the little detective. More and more frequently, mundane things in his daily life would remind him of Conan. He started to follow the news reports about the Sleeping Kogoro. He researched old articles about Kudou and couldn't help but notice how attractive the teenager version was. Which, yeah, narcissism and all that, but hey, Kaito was hot and he knew it! Plus, as a master of disguise, he was naturally drawn to the differences between them, so it really wasn't the same as staring at a mirror.

By maybe the second or third time that he caught himself daydreaming about Kudou (the older version, of course), he'd let out a sigh of resignation and had to accept that he had it bad. This was much more than a crush. This was love, and it wasn't going away anytime soon.

A doomed love, but still love. He knew that his role as Kid prevented him from having a real relationship with anyone. There were only a few options, none of them good. He could approach someone as Kuroba Kaito and then lie all the time, which was not a great start for a serious relationship. He could approach someone as Kid and then lie all the time, which was somehow worse. Or he could tell someone all his secrets, which had its own potential downsides. Despite his reputation as a hopeless flirt, Kaito actually took romance and even friendships quite seriously, so he would only ever consider the third option, which meant that, unless another thief walked up to him during a heist like what had happened for his parents, he was probably in for a very long wait.

Life would be so much simpler if the heart would just listen to reason. But instead, here he was, with a hopeless and pointless crush on a detective who was trying to arrest him. And it's not as if he could simply avoid seeing the guy! So he might as well enjoy whatever little time they got to spend together in their current roles. And hey, if he sometimes maybe entertained fantasies about sharing all his secrets and burdens with Tantei-kun, well, nobody had to know about that.

And there was plenty to fantasize about. Conan also lingered after heists for friendly conversations, and was obviously reluctant to arrest him. Singapore, in particular, had proven that. Airport security officials do not pinch faces, and Kaito had any number of fake passports he could've used. In addition, there were dozens of other ways he could've defended himself against the false accusations without kidnapping a detective. For example, Jii-chan's suggestion of simply not walking into an obvious trap had some merit. And of course Conan could've easily escaped at any time and turned him in. The entire thing was obviously contrived by Kaito as a way to spend time with his favorite critic and work alongside him. And Conan had indeed stayed by his side, which made Kaito irrationally giddy no matter how many times he told himself not to get carried away.

But apparently Conan hadn't gotten the memo about their well-established friendship. Maybe it shouldn't have been so surprising, given how remarkably dense the brilliant detective could be about his own emotions, and how stubborn. But then again, that conviction in his ideas was something Kaito really admired about him. It made sense that someone with as much integrity as Conan would struggle to accept a thief. Kaito could understand that; he'd had to think through many of the same issues himself when he'd first chosen to become Kid, and the detective didn't even have the benefit of knowing all of Kaito's reasons.

Emotions aside, it would definitely be problematic if Conan decided to actually arrest him. After all the times that Conan had successfully landed soccer balls or seen through his disguises, it was certainly possible for him to put a sleeping dart in Kid's back. And Kid really didn't have a lot of ways to defend against that, short of knocking the boy out with a taser at the start of every heist. He would very much prefer not to do that, for a variety of reasons, so he could only wait and hope that Conan would decide on friendship instead. That's why he'd even risked such an honest conversation with the detective a few days ago. Which had probably gone ok? He thought? Well, Kaito had always been lucky before, so who knows, right?

He desperately wished he could tell Tantei-kun everything. Even if Conan didn't believe his story or never joined his mission, Kaito simply longed for a deeper relationship with no secrets. But no, Kaito had already promised to never tell him a single thing.

Was it better to ask permission or forgiveness? Generally he didn't bother with either, but making glitter explode out of someone's school locker was a somewhat different matter than potentially getting your loved ones arrested for aiding and abetting an internationally wanted criminal. Kaito's desires and opinions regarding the detective ultimately didn't matter when it wasn't just his secret he was protecting. Jii-chan actively assisted him, and his mom was at least guilty of criminal negligence for not reporting him, and potentially much more if her role as the Phantom Lady were to come up. If Kid were ever to be arrested, both of them would almost certainly be discovered and charged as well. So he'd promised them that he would respect their wishes about this, even if their wishes were wrong and stupid.

So Kaito knew he would have to continue resisting temptation every time he saw his Tantei-kun. But at least he could still enjoy their friendly conversations. He wondered if anything was going to change now? Would Conan stay to talk with him longer from now on? Perhaps they could even talk about more substantial things than their usual exchange of wits, or even get to know each other better. He started mentally rehearsing what he would say during their typical post-heist banter next time.

Kaito's smile broadened as he began to think up some nice taunts for their next encounter. Yes, it was a beautiful day, and everything had seemed to go well for him these past few weeks.

Well, ok, so Aoko had started dating Hakuba, which Kaito had thrown an absolute fit about when she'd told him. She'd become strangely cold at that and stiffly asked him was wrong with her dating somebody, but when he'd scoffed and started listing off all the reasons why Hakuba was "simply the worst," she'd relaxed and laughed for some reason and then told him it was not up to him whom she chose and that was that.

Although Hakuba's presence at their lunches and study sessions had really grated on him at first (and he pretended it still did), he had to admit to himself that it had been pleasantly surprising as well. He'd expected Hakuba to be constantly watching him for "suspicious activity" or handcuffing him or trying to trip him up with trick questions, but so far he'd simply been friendly toward Kaito. Perhaps he was hoping Kaito would lower his guard (fat chance!), or, more likely, Aoko had talked to him about it. Either way, so far it had been surprisingly bearable to be in the Brit's company.

More importantly, Hakuba treated Aoko like a literal princess, even insisting on silly old-fashioned gestures like holding doors open and pulling out chairs for her. Of course someone who could put a hole through a wall with only a mop didn't need such treatment, but it clearly delighted her anyway. Ultimately, when Kaito saw how happy Aoko was, he decided the guy couldn't be that bad after all. They really seemed to like each other and get along well, and he hadn't seen Aoko smile this much in a long time. He was genuinely happy for her.

That was another thing that had gone well. When he'd first realized that his role as Kid and her fervent hatred of Kid would prevent them from ever dating, he'd been devastated and a little bitter about it. Even though he'd known it was the right thing to do, giving up on his dreams about her had still hurt like a lost limb. For a long time, even though he always told himself he was fine, he'd still been apprehensive about if he'd ever really get over it or be ok with her dating anyone else.

And now that it had finally happened, he was elated to discover that he had no hard feelings at all. He didn't resent Hakuba (no more than usual anyway), he wasn't jealous or insecure or even lonely, and his friendship with Aoko had even improved. Actually, their friendship had improved a lot since sometime approximately a few weeks ago. Like, a really weird amount.

Somehow their interactions suddenly felt lighter and freer, as if some tension between them had mysteriously evaporated all on its own. She also seemed to trust him more and had been more open and real with him lately, which caused him to follow suit as well. Had Aoko read a self-help book or something? He decided not to pry for details in case it was too personal.

Whatever the cause, having his friendship with her strengthened made him abundantly happy. This was far better than dating her would've been anyway, he realized. He loved pranking her, and she put up with him well enough, but the one time they'd actually gone on a date, Aoko had clearly wanted something with less teasing from the romantic side, which just didn't sound fun at all to Kaito. No, he preferred teasing her and bickering and dodging mops in a platonic manner, while Hakuba provided all the boring serious stuff that she apparently liked for some unfathomable reason. Everything was just so much more enjoyable and peaceful now that that whole mess had been cleared up.

Kaito didn't know if it was because of their deepened friendship or what, but Aoko had also been a lot nicer to him in conversations about Kid recently. Several times over the last few weeks when the topic had come up among their classmates, Aoko would start on her usual tirade about how awful his alter ego was, then cut herself off and turn to give him a sheepish half smile in apology. As if that wasn't strange enough, she'd actually asked him what he thought of the latest heists, in a tone that made it sound like she actually wanted an answer. When he'd decided to play along and pretend to be a fan of himself by rambling excitedly about how great Kid was, she'd actually genuinely listened to him, and with the strangest smile on her face.

She really could be so baffling sometimes. Even so, this was weird enough that Kaito had felt the need to actually voluntarily approach Akako to ask if she'd happened to cast any spells on them lately. Shockingly, that had only made her giggle uncontrollably, and not in her usual creepy imitation of laughter but in actual human enjoyment, with her hand pressed firmly over her mouth as if she could barely contain some hilarious secret. Kaito regretted even trying and hastily retreated — if there was something that even Akako wanted to keep a secret from him, then he surely didn't want to know it.

In any case, whatever strange idea Aoko had gotten into her head about Kid, Kaito definitely approved of it! He hadn't realized how much it had been weighing on him to have to keep his secrets from Aoko while they were clearly hurting her, so this was surely a change for the better.

Kaito switched from humming to singing softly as he bounced up the stairs to his front door. "I'm ho-ome!" he called out to any of his doves that might be within hearing range, as he threw his jacket and backpack aside and toed off his shoes. He headed straight for the kitchen where he knew there was some chocolate milk in the fridge practically shouting his name, but as he tossed the mail onto the table he stopped in his tracks.

He picked up the stack of mail again and pulled out an envelope from the middle, a thick heavy envelope that had made a suspiciously loud noise when he dropped the stack. The hairs on his neck and arms stood on end as soon as he saw it. No return address or name, and his own address was printed rather than written. Worse, in place of his name, the sender had simply used initials "K. K." in English. Anyone else who saw it would assume it was meant for the "Kuroba Kaito" who lived at that address, but a sinking twisting feeling in his gut somehow knew that it was a way of discreetly addressing "Kaitou Kid."

He turned it over and tore through the top, to avoid the excessive glue that had been used to seal it. With growing dread he slowly pulled out the contents… and promptly stopped breathing.

It was a picture of himself — not Kid, but clearly unmistakably Kuroba Kaito — standing in his secret room with his equipment.

How? How? The rest of the mail went flying across the kitchen floor as he unceremoniously threw it down and sprinted to the secret room. He checked for bugs. In every nook and cranny of the room until his chest hurt from breathing hard and his hands were raw from rubbing against every inch of the walls and floor. But there were no bugs and no cameras. He kept comparing the photograph in his hand to his vantage point in the room, and this was definitely the right spot but there were no cameras.

There were no cameras anymore. Clearly there had been cameras at some point. He shuddered and hid his face in his hands. Stupid! What a stupid mistake! He'd never once checked this room for bugs! He'd never even installed any security cameras or locks on the poster. He'd assumed there had been no point. It was a secret room, after all, and if anyone ever found it then they wouldn't need to plant bugs in order to get evidence against him. It had been unbelievably careless to assume that this room was safe and never even consider the possibility of blackmail.

Blackmail! That's right, the picture had been mailed to him. If it had been taken by someone in law enforcement, they would've shown up with a warrant rather than a letter. And if this was blackmail, there must be demands, which meant that there was still a possibility Kaito could avoid prison. Calm down, he told himself. He'd dealt with blackmail before. Whatever the demands were, he would just have to find a way to handle it and get the pictures deleted. He felt a chill run down his spine at the memory of the last time he was blackmailed, of Nightmare slipping out of his hands and Kenta's cries at seeing his father– No! Kaito would not allow that to happen ever again! Whatever it took, he was going to handle this and nobody would get hurt this time, he would make sure of it!

He took a few deep breaths to gather his nerves then forced himself to look at the rest of the contents of the envelope.

There were several more pictures of himself in the secret room with various equipment and blueprints and other evidence, as if the one picture wasn't enough. There was even a photocopy of some of his fingerprints found in the room, which, come on, overkill much? He was already prepared to accept just about any terms the blackmailer might want.

There was one last item in the envelope, and Kaito gripped it but paused before sliding it out of the envelope, to try to give his heart a moment to catch up. What sort of demands could drive someone to such lengths to get evidence against him? No, no, he couldn't allow his imagination to fill in any blanks here, he just had to gather his courage and look at the paper and—

…

...

Huh.

…

Well… huh.

…that couldn't be right.

He flipped the card over looking for more writing on the back. Maybe there was something else in the envelope? Anything written on the back of one of the photos? A second secret message written with invisible ink that would be visible if held up to a light?

…no?

...

Well.

…

...

Could it be a code?! He puzzled over it for a few minutes. He checked the back of the note again, but it was still blank.

...

He stared dumbly at the demands for a long, long, long time.

Seriously? That was it? All that effort to get blackmail materials so potent that they could make Kaito do just about anything, but all this person wanted was for him to stop flipping girl's skirts and peeking into locker rooms? Really? Even with all the threatening language in the note, all that "this is your only warning" and "I'll know if you ever try it'' silly posturing, and yet this was really the only condition? Not even to stop being Kid or to pay money or to do favors? Just… be more respectful of women…?

…

Huh.

Ok. So, first of all, he was never going to flip a skirt or peek into a locker room ever again for as long as he lived. Second of all, what the hell?

Well, he was certainly going to outfit the Kid room — no, his entire house! — with state of the art locks and anti-theft devices (irony be damned). Maybe he'd even set some traps here and there for unsuspecting trespassers. Then he would try to find the blackmailer and get this evidence destroyed.

He already knew the only fingerprints he would find on the letter would be from the mailmen, so that wouldn't help. Clearly blackmailer-san didn't want to be found. Kaito could only make guesses based on the note, which was… not super helpful.

Maybe the blackmailer was female? He quickly ran through a list of all the women he knew. Obviously not his mother. Akako, maybe? She already sort of knew his secret, but she'd never indicated that the pranks bothered her. Besides, didn't they have some kind of weird truce thing? The demands were way too sensible to be from Akako anyway.

Could it have been Aoko? …No, that wasn't possible! She did have a key to his house… and she'd been acting differently about Kid recently… and she did hate having her skirt flipped… But no, it couldn't be! He wouldn't believe it! Surely Aoko would've spoken to him directly if she'd found the room, right? She would feel angry and hurt and betrayed, and she would tell him to stop being Kid rather than focusing on some silly pranks like this.

It just couldn't be Aoko! He re-read the letter again looking desperately for clues, and latched onto a sentence that was probably meant to sound threatening: "I am not the law, but I represent justice." It felt just ever so slightly out of place, almost like a quote or—

He did a quick internet search for it and nearly threw the phone at the wall when he saw the top result: "Arthur Conan Doyle. 'The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes', p.97, House of Stratus."

HAKUBA.

It all made sense now! No handwriting on the letter. Formal writing style. Official analysis of his own fingerprints. Unnecessarily long logic in the note spelling out his guilt. This whole situation just had 'detective' written all over it! Kaito knew more than his fair share of detectives, but who fit the bill better than Hakubastard?

That nosy British prick liked to boast about being "92.6% confident" of Kid's identity. He knew where Kaito lived, could use Aoko's spare key, and was clever enough to find the secret passage. He saw Kaito every day so would know if he obeyed the demands. And, now that he had just started dating Aoko, Hakuba had the perfect motive to make Kaito stop flipping her skirt. In fact, if he was being considerate of Aoko's feelings and didn't want her to break up with him for imprisoning her childhood friend, it even made sense for Hakuba to want to subtly manipulate him without actually arresting him. Kaito still would've expected a direct confrontation rather than an anonymous letter, but maybe the Brit feared Kaito's reaction. As he should.

The letter crinkled in his fist. Before he knew what he was doing, he had pulled up Hakuba's contact info and was holding the ringing phone to his ear while furiously tapping his foot.

"Kuroba-kun? Can I help you?"

"Oh, hey, Hakuba, buddy!" he replied in his most friendly and chipper voice. He could almost feel the resulting shudder across the line. "Got a quick question for you! How do you feel about me flipping girl's skirts?"

Silence. A lot of silence. Kaito waited, becoming more convinced with every passing second.

"...is this a trick question?" the Brit eventually asked.

"Nope! Just an ordinary, regular, non-specific, friendly, everyday question. Your honest answer, please?"

"I... Well, my honest answer? I think that it is a loathsome and barbaric behavior, and that if you tried it in a Western country, you could be facing multiple lawsuits for it, with heavier charges against you than simple jewel theft."

"Hmm, interesting, ok. So, purely hypothetically, would you ever try to get me to stop doing it? Maybe by using leverage of some kind?"

A weary sigh. "If I thought I had a way to make you stop, I certainly would, Kuroba-kun. Why do you ask?"

"Great, thanks! Catch ya later, buddy!"

"Kuro—" he began, but Kaito had already hung up. His face slowly morphed into a combination of scowl and smirk that probably would've won him some awards if he'd performed it as the lead antagonist in a horror movie.

So, plus side, the blackmailer was definitely not violent, nobody was going to get hurt, and probably nothing worse would happen. And Kaito would get him to return all the original copies of the pictures by doing exactly what he wanted: pranks. After all, he wouldn't even need to prank the girls if he could channel all that energy to a different, much more deserving, target! He would just keep on pranking that bastard until he handed over the evidence, and then everything would be back to normal. Yeah, ok. He could handle this, for sure. It was going to be ok, this was all under control.

He gave another moment's consideration to the crumpled papers still clutched in his hand before deciding no one ever needed to know about this, and he shoved everything behind one of the bookshelves in the Kid room. That taken care of, he breathed a sigh of relief and slowly meandered back to the kitchen. He had some locks to install and some serious pranks to plan out. But first, there was some chocolate milk in the fridge calling his name.

A/N

Yes, I know, I know, Conan is not very respectful of other people's feelings! That, combined with a flair for being overly dramatic for no reason (blame Yukiko), and it takes a very special kind of person to be able to put up with him. That said, Kaito really does need to stop with the whole underwear thing.

Next Up: Conan starts developing a plan to help Kid with his little sniper problem.